Canada's environment minister opened a meeting of her G7 counterparts with a call for action on climate change, even as prominent environmentalist David Suzuki reportedly called for her resignation over Ottawa's support of fossil fuels.

Catherine McKenna led off the three-day Halifax gathering by telling a story of meeting young people in the Arctic who she said are worried about ice so thin that hunters are falling through into the ocean when they search for food.

Recalling a summer visit to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, McKenna said she went to the local school and heard the high school students' accounts of disappearing caribou, polar bears moving further south and greater dangers for people seeking traditional foods.

"They're seeing hunters literally falling through the ice. These are hunters who for millenia have been able to hunt ... able to tell the thickness of the ice, and they're falling through the ice," she said.

She told the meeting that young people in the North are anxiously waiting for national leaders to come up with ways to deal with the warming climate.

"(They're) just worried. They're worried about their community, they're worried about their culture, and they're worried about whether we're going to do anything about it, because they don't feel empowered to do anything about it," she said.